Cuban Propaganda Gets the Chop in Florida

But against heavy legal pressure

Portraying life in Castro's Cuba as some sort of paradise is something that only the far Left would do. That untold numbers of Cubans risk their lives to escape the "paradise" concerned is surely enough all by itself to give the lie to such a picture.

Yet there are lots of copies of books in the school libraries of Miami that DO portray Cuba in a rosy light. Finally, however, the school board has voted to remove such misleading books from all Miami-Dade school libraries.

The ACLU is going to sue to keep the books of course. Defending lies is no problem for them, as long as they are Leftist lies.

There are of course untold numbers of lying books and articles in the world and all adults have to make judgemnents about which to believe. But to be happy with little kids being fed lies in the guise of education is obnoxious.






Student strike-breakers

A big whine below about British students wanting value for their money

The industrial action by university lecturers in Britain has now been suspended after a deal was reached between the unions and their employers. The University and College Union (UCU) agreed to a pay rise of 10.37 per cent over 22 months and a 15.5 per cent rise for the lowest-paid non-academic university workers. There will also be an independent review of salaries in 2008, which will examine how much money is available for pay rises from extra revenues gained from top-up fees.

Although the ending of the strike should be welcomed, there are worrying lessons to be learned from the student population's reaction to it. We witnessed a startling lack of solidarity within higher education and a very small-minded approach to education from many of those students who have benefited greatly from it. Sally Hunt and Paul Mackney, the general secretaries of the UCU, said: `No settlement ever provides everything that you want for members, but we believe that this is the best that can be achieved within the current national negotiating environment.' Students are partly to blame for creating that negative `negotiating environment', which limited public support for the lecturers.

The majority of the media coverage of the strike showed students moaning about the detrimental effect such industrial action might have on their studies. For instance, 21-year-old fashion student Lucy Macfarlane questioned what students were `getting from it' (university) despite the government `putting fees up so much'; she also maligned lecturers for using students as `bait'.

This trend of self-centred thinking extended as far as Kat Fletcher, president of the National Union of Students (NUS), who continually emphasised the `extremely difficult time' students faced during and after the strike, despite the fact that the NUS, officially at least, supported the lecturers' demand for higher pay. The NUS supported the lecturers' demands while disagreeing with the only viable method they had of achieving a substantial pay rise - namely, striking during the exam period.

The majority of students are guilty, it seems, of treating education as nothing more than a means to employment, and by doing so they are betraying the very spirit of education. [Which is .... ?]

A survey in the Times Educational Supplement highlighted the bizarre student approach to the strike. Sixty-eight per cent of students agreed that academics deserved higher pay, as did the Bett Committee (1999), the last major independent review of university pay, which recommended a `significant increase' in minimum starting salaries for lecturers and said that those with much responsibility, such as professors, merited `rewards more commensurate with the weight of their responsibilities'. However, 77 per cent of students simultaneously opposed the lecturers' boycott of assessment. It is of course legitimate for students to be concerned about their work going unmarked; however, the student population failed to recognise that the lecturers were not striking out of malice but rather were taking the only course of action through which they could achieve their aims.

If all of the academics in England staged a one-day strike at any other time of the year, as workers in many other industries can, it would have achieved nothing and received little attention. It is only when exams are threatened that lecturers get attention from vice chancellors and media coverage. Yet Emma Powell, the Student Union president at the University of Kent, where students marched against their lecturers, stated: `We don't want to be used as leverage anymore. We do support the [union's] demands for better pay but we just want our marks.'

This lack of solidarity within higher education was detrimental to the UCU's quest for higher pay. The media and public seemed more concerned with the effect the action would have on graduates in the short term than with the decline in wages that has been occurring for nearly 30 years. A mix of self-importance and indifference characterised the student response to the strikes....

The notion of an institution of education entering into a business agreement/contract with its students is a perversion of the very spirit of education that such institutions must cultivate. Education should not be seen purely as a means to employment, yet it is exactly this mindset that seems widespread among students up and down the country. Education is an end in its own right, a vital component of self-fulfillment; it must not be seen to be subservient to other goals and should not be treated as such. [In that case the teachers should be idealistic and accept low pay too?] ....

Those on the left worry about liberalising the market in higher education further, but they have missed a vital point. The market already exists in the most damaging place of all - the minds of the students.

More here






Schools may be 'liable' for bullies

Schools which fail to protect students from bullying could be forced to pay thousands of dollars in legal damages, an academic has warned. Brisbane-based Professor Des Butler, from Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Faculty of Law, said there were many Australian examples of bullied students taking civil court action against their schools and winning "sizeable" financial compensation. "Under the law, a school may have breached its duty of care if it has failed to prevent its students from being bullied at school," Prof Butler said.

He said bullying had become a serious problem, which could result in criminal and civil action against the perpetrator as well. "The problem with taking civil action against the perpetrator, they may not be worth suing," Prof Butler said. "This is why we see cases of schools being sued, because they are seen as having deep pockets. "Public schools have government backing and private schools have insurance."

He said that in 2001 a jury ruled in favour of a teenage boy who was awarded $60,000 after suffering bullying over three years at a school in Ballarat, Victoria. "It was a daily campaign he had to put up with - one student tried to strangle him with a cord ... it was a combination of both physical and psychological (bullying)," Prof Butler said. "The school was held to not have taken adequate steps to deal with it."

Prof Butler said another Melbourne student was awarded $73,000 in 2003 for her school's failure to prevent her being bullied over two years. "She again was subjected to a range of behaviours, verbal and physical assaults, intimidation and harassment ... she had girls calling her 'fat bitch', 'fat slut', 'two-dollar hooker' ... she was in years seven and eight," he said. "They were engraving these things into classroom tables and threatened to kill her and harm her on a daily basis."

However, Prof Butler also said schools were not insurers of students' safety. "The school is only held responsible if it has failed to take reasonable care and take the precautions that a school would take," Prof Butler said. "Just because a student has been bullied doesn't mean a school is automatically responsible for it. "You can't exactly wrap them with cotton wool - you can't have a prison camp type of environment but by the same token there are certain behaviours that shouldn't be allowed. "Part of the problem with these things is where do you draw the line?" He said it was essential schools adopted a "zero tolerance" policy to tackle bullying with tough consequences.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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